Posted by Erol Abit on April 27, 1999 at 17:49:03:
In Reply to: A restatement of the questions posted by Steve Price on April 26, 1999 at 07:30:42:
Dear Steve,
You know I know nothing about rugs comparing with you. But to tell an opinion on somethings sometimes doesn't require rug knowledge. So, I defenced myself in advance.
If I understood correctly, you are searching an answer to a question of why there are differences between weavings (properties) of two different groups in close proximity. It is more clear if we consider one of them used salt bags while the other one did not. This is really interesting thing that I thought on for a while. You discussed already about "salt BAGS" but not about "SALT bags". As you see I may be about arising a stupid question (you are not alone if your question is stupid question). Now I am hestitating to tell another idea but I will do... This is a matter of taste. Perhaps, Turkmen were not using much Salt in their meals... This seems to be funny if I don't give another funny example from us. Once I was told that my grandparents in their young ages had not seen tomato before and when they begun to eat tomato they selected green, not ripe, tomatos because they were thinking for years red tomatos were rotten. It was 60-70 years ago. This made me think that Turkmen did learn salt much later than Persians or didn't use salt as much as Persians did? They were living in a close geographic proximity. You are arising the question of dissimilarities between them who lived in close proximity. But were they "really" living at the same time?
There might have been "time delay" or "time difference" between cultures, between those two groups. In fact, those two groups were not living in the same time even they lived in the same geographic space area (like my grandpa learned tomato just some decades ago while neighbour town was eating red tomatos.) Finally, if we add the conservative characters of them, this my own idea of time delay seemed to me to be not illogical. I am sure you all disagree with me.
Regards,
Erol